'Two men on stage
are involved in a symphony of arm movements, a relationship that seems
beyond repair but still filled with deep feeling. After an intermission,
eight dancers spill across the stage in a tumultuous cascade of shifting
heaps and lifts that evoke struggles for domination.

The first image comes
from ''Distance'' and the second from ''Of the Earth Far Below,'' the
two splendid premieres that Doug Varone choreographed to Steve Reich's
music for the ''Face the Music and Dance'' series at Symphony Space. The
all-Reich program on Thursday featured Doug Varone and Dancers with the
String Quartet of the Steve Reich Ensemble and was completed by Mr. Varone's
1997 ''Proverb.''

It may seem odd that
Mr. Varone is interested in choreographing both to Berlioz (the Metropolitan
Opera's ''Troyens'' last winter) and to pioneers of minimalist music like
Mr. Reich. Yet this very interest in a wide range of composers may explain
why his approach to minimalist-derived music differs from that of most
choreographers. He has jettisoned their strict adherence to repetitive
structures and modular blocs of movement and played with stillness and
dynamics. This contrast makes for drama, and Mr. Varone's choreography
inevitably carries an emotional undercurrent.

''Distance,'' the
program's best piece, showed Mr. Varone's genius for distillation at its
most profound. Mr. Reich's ''Violin Phase'' was offered as a vivid dialogue
between Elizabeth Lim-Dutton, a live violinist on a platform, and a tape
of her own playing.

At the start Mr. Varone
stood at some distance behind Larry Hahn and then engaged him in a gestural
conversation in which Mr. Hahn's rejection of Mr. Varone acquired a ''this
hurts me more than it hurts you'' intensity.

Mr. Varone made Mr.
Hahn place his own hand on his own heart. Later he violently placed Mr.
Hahn's hand on his, Mr. Varone's, heart. When mounting frustration led
Mr. Varone to retreat, Mr. Hahn looked back and touched his own heart,
a symbol of feelings his character still had.

Mr. Hahn, a study
in exasperation through a quietly mobile face, and Mr. Varone, a portrait
in seething desperation, joined Ms. Lim-Dutton to make it all work. Mr.
Varone's coup was to counter the music's jagged phrases not with a corresponding
frenzy of steps but with a flow of gestures that created an emotional
silence.

Mr. Reich's ''Triple
Quartet,'' played onstage by Ms. Lim-Dutton, Jeanne LeBlanc, Scott Rawls
and Todd Reynolds, provided the three sections for ''Of the Earth Far
Below.'' The dancers in Liz Prince's black costumes tumbled onstage, regrouped,
collapsed and formed trios and pairs in which power games seemed dominant.
Here, Mr. Varone allowed the music to chug along with the movement and
to build with its insistent folklike rhythms.

The second, quiet,
section for four dancers used some gestures of restraint. Natalie Desch
emerged as a victim before the third section erupted with a clangor that
was matched by the full cast's dynamic outburst of circling, dives, lifts
and huddles. Ms. Desch, Adriane Fang and Eddie Taketa stood out in a finely
tuned cast that included John Beasant III, Daniel Charon, Stephanie Liapis,
Catherine Miller and Kayvon Pourazar.

''Proverb'' was accompanied
by a tape of the Steve Reich Ensemble and a choral group, Theater of Voices.
It is a grave piece with a pretentious edge in its liturgical aura. Ms.
Desch was a preacher type among seven dancers in white. Roma Flowers provided
the striking lighting.